Troy | Ellerslie

“If I could change one thing, that there would be a cure for cancer.

Yeah, absolutely my wife has stage 4 breast cancer, and we’ve been battling it for the last four and a half years. One thing that’s really important is that she is living with cancer. She’s not surviving. She’s not just getting by. She’s a person that says, you know, at the end of the day, it’s important to live and get on with it, and she doesn’t see herself as a, as a patient. She doesn’t see herself as anything other than a, than a woman that’s fighting it and getting on with it.

One thing I would love though is that we could get Pharmac to give us a bit more funding to help women with breast cancer so they don’t have to raise funds or die, and so we, we end up losing a lot of the beautiful wāhine in New Zealand. So, that’s why, why I think it’s important we try and get some of these things happening.

I believe in community spirit, and I believe it’s really important that you, you give back as well, and so I’ve got involved with residents association and local things here. The patrol is really cool, because it gives the opportunity to go out and just see how people are, and if there’re any problems, you know, we contact the police. Doing truancy patrol today, really cool, just you know, asking kids why they’re not, you know, why they’re not at school, and parents, et cetera. It’s a way of giving back, and to me I think everybody should try and give back something, not matter how small it is. I know we’re all time-poor ah, but giving back is a really good way of trying to help things.

I grew up in Auckland. I spent time overseas and then came back to Tāmaki Makaurau because I just had a, a desire to come back in New Zealand. It sort of brings you back, and wants you to come back here. What values and what things are important to me? It’s community. I try to do as much voluntary work in the community as I can, because at the end of the day, it’s better to have a village. It’s better to have a community spirit, and one thing Auckland, it has and is growing more so, is some community spirit.”